DOCSLIB.ORG

2 Musical Forms and Spaces |

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
2 Musical Forms and Spaces | 2 Musical forms and spaces The ‘acoustic panorama of the Indonesian city’ (Colombijn 2007:269) is both distinctive and under-theorized. In Yogyakarta’s Sosrowijayan, music and the broader ‘soundscape’ (Shafer 1977) were integral to the roadside/alleyway division outlined in the previous chapter. These in turn influenced and were influenced by social relations such as those between street guides and becak drivers. Greater Sosrowijayan is hemmed in by three noisy, busy roads, and Sosrowijayan Street itself, which in 2001 was sleepier but nonetheless accommodated waves of motorised transport ranging from motorcycles to trucks and buses. To enter the alley- ways off any street, however, within metres the street sounds gave way to a soundscape of kampung activities. Varying with some consistency over the course of each day, sounds included chatter, faint echoes of children playing, murmurs and scuffing shoes of passers-by, devotional sounds from mosques and churches, soap operas on television, melancholy ballads and talkback on radio, guitars and singing, the clinking of cooking utensils and whoosh of gas cookers, trickles of running water, cooing pigeons, and the ‘tok tok’, ‘puk puk puk’ and other signals of passing traders (Nakagawa 2000:133-4). The neighbourhood aural environment resulted from a combination of thin walls and open windows, in turn deriving from climatic compatibility and economic scarcity, as well as locally enforced noise regulations such as bans on rid- ing motorised vehicles, and on making undue noise after hours, especially after midnight. This chapter explores the two main spaces and forms of public music making that regularly took place on the roadsides and alley- ways in Sosrowijayan: that of mobile buskers (pengamen) and that at hangouts. Self and cultural expression played a role in both kinds of music making, but they differed in terms of social affiliations, musical genres, and also in their relation to monetary exchange. Moving buskers sought cash directly, while those playing music at Max M. Richter - 9789004253490 Downloaded from Brill.com10/11/2021 01:33:31AM via free access | Musical worlds in Yogyakarta hangouts did not, although as outlined earlier such locations also served as bases for seeking business. Below I seek to demonstrate how these forms of music making generated and converted vari- ous forms of capital, drawing particularly on examples of musical genres that can be plotted broadly along a sub-national/regionalist to globalist axis. The analysis thereby posits links between musical genres and social capital among becak drivers and street guides, and seeks to articulate the roles of these in conflict avoidance in situ- ations such as that at the start of Part One, in which street guides musically colonised a becak drivers’ hangout. mobile PENGAMEN Java has a long history of travelling performers (Body 1982; Cohen 2006), whose forms have ranged from large theatre troupes (Hatley 2008:22-4; Foulcher 2004) to ‘street tough’ kroncong soloists known variously as buaya (crocodile) and jago (rooster) (Judith Becker 1975). Urban itinerant musicians are socially and financially mar- ginalised yet, paradoxically, are central to the development of many musical forms that powerful politicians subsequently laud as national treasures (Manuel 1988:18). The Indonesian term for busker, penga- men, translates as ‘singing beggar’; indeed, like beggars (pengemis), most pengamen in Yogyakarta are poor in economic terms. Unlike beggars however, many elicit some respect, a reflection of their greater cultural capital. In turn, pengamen generate situations that either reinforce or help to transcend boundaries between becak driv- ers, street guides, and other people on the streets. In 2001, music making on Yogyakarta’s streets and other public spaces projected both court/village and urban/street associations. On the one side, many Javanese street musicians played instru- ments and forms from, or resembling those of, courtly gamelan orchestras (Lockard 1998:58). As discussed earlier, karawitan, langgam, kroncong and to a degree dangdut all underpin much of what constitutes campursari music. On the other side, many peo- ple meant by musik jalanan the generally western-influenced folk/ rock music such as that of national superstar Iwan Fals. While the inner-city anak jalanan term tended to engender sympathy or deri- sion (Solvang 2002), musik jalanan generally carried ‘street cred’ and pop culture iconography to the point of being a subculture. These court/village and urban/street musics projected regionalist and globalist cultural affiliations respectively, which in turn map broadly onto the becak driver/tourist guide street-worker division. 54 Max M. Richter - 9789004253490 Downloaded from Brill.com10/11/2021 01:33:31AM via free access 2 Musical forms and spaces | My previous encounters with music making around Yogyakar- ta’s streets were a prime reason for choosing this research site. By 2000 however, streetside music making seemed to have waned. I discussed this matter with Mas Gunanto, a local anthropologist who had researched anak jalanan around Malioboro in the 1970s. Gunanto concurred, suggesting that before the 1997 economic crisis pengamen were concentrated in Malioboro, with a different group passing through Sosrowijayan every ten minutes. More recently, he pointed out, most pengamen played on trains, buses and at busy intersections. I too had noticed the explosion of pengamen on public transport and amid the din of traffic intersections. This exacerbated competition for already scarce resources. Many of the new buskers in these locations merely held an instrument and pre- tended to play it, although a student informed me that this ‘dummy playing’ was now declining because the public had begun refusing to reward such advances. While some pengamen in Yogyakarta did not actually play at all, others gave spectacular performances of topical songs, as well as more comforting and familiar traditional ones. On Malioboro Street too there was still a considerable variety of pengamen, includ- ing street children who played in the evenings near the Tourist Information Centre (Solvang 2002), and generally older, itinerant musicians in Beringharjo Market. These pengamen trends reflected the sharp rises in urban unemployment and drops in domestic and international tourism at the time. The decreased activity and diversity of musical activity around the inner city was somewhat dis- heartening; but as described below, this situation at least enabled me to distinguish between the regular and the occasional pengamen around Sosrowijayan. One regular group consisted of an elderly man and two to three middle-aged women, all dressed in traditional Yogyanese style. They played regionalist karawitan (gamelan music with singing), includ- ing the well-known nationalist kroncong melody ‘Bengawan Solo’ (Solo River) accompanied on a zither (celumpung) and, at times, kendang drum. A husband and wife team recently arrived from East Java, aged 30 and 36 respectively, performed langgam and campur- sari music. They both sang while he played the zither, and on some evenings he played the same songs as a solo guitarist. Most days the elderly Bu Yani sang langgam and campursari while shaking her tam- bourine, despite restaurant and eatery staff often admonishing her for repeatedly returning to the same site and customers. Both Bu Surati and Pak Wasirun were kroncong solo guitarists of long stand- ing in the area whose playing around tables and stalls occasionally gave rise to requests and etiquette-laden bowing. 55 Max M. Richter - 9789004253490 Downloaded from Brill.com10/11/2021 01:33:31AM via free access | Musical worlds in Yogyakarta All of these pengamen tried their luck at backpacker cafés, the domain of tourist guides, yet their music had more in common with the tastes of becak drivers. As a result, their endeavours to attain economic gain through regionalist cultural projections were rarely successful. Furthermore, foreigners generally favoured the more purist forms of gamelan in their palatial settings, and western pop music, with the relatively hybridized forms of the pengamen falling between the two. A couple of pengamen acts passing through Sosrowijayan received a more positive response. A young, lower-class woman sang ‘Hati yang luka’ (A wounded heart; see Yampolsky 1989) in the kroncong- style thrumbing of her mandolin at the Resto entrance one after- noon. As her friend stood breastfeeding her baby in the background, the performer won the approval of the street-savvy Indonesian women there for the novelty of her rendition. On another occa- sion, a 40 year old Sumatran man named Girang played his beaten- up guitar that had recently fallen from a train, with his baritone voice and delicate plucking style producing soulful cover versions of nostalgic ballads from the early 1970s such as ‘Gubahanku’ (My composition). In both these cases, the players’ unusual renditions of nationalist music bridged regional and national associations into greater social interaction than the other players mentioned above. In their musical and dress presentations, all of these pengamen manifested what I am calling a regionalist identity, but they varied in terms of the types and levels of capital with which they operated. The karawitan musicians played songs favoured by becak drivers, and they sometimes mingled quietly at food stalls. These interactions, while not based directly on music, seemed to encourage mutual support (including economic
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Cross-Cultural Encounters and the Making of Early Kroncong History
    CHAPTER ELEVEN ‘BARAT KETEMU TIMUr’: Cross-CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS AND THE MAKING OF EARLY KRONCONG HISTORY Lutgard Mutsaers Introduction Regarding the notion of cross-cultural encounters impacting on the course of music, kroncong is a case in point.1 It symbolizes the intimate rela- tionship between Indonesia and the Netherlands unlike any other music. Although its roots were neither Dutch nor Indonesian, it was on Indone- sian soil under the Dutch crown that kroncong compromised a middle ground between European and Asian aesthetics and social practices. To the present day kroncong holds its own cultural space in both Indonesia and the Netherlands as evergreen signature sound of East-West relations. The unique bond was forged around the turn of the twentieth century, well before commercial electrical recording, radio and sound film would turn kroncong into the national popular music of Indonesia on its road to Independence, and into a special favourite and a home-grown genre in the Netherlands on its road to geographical miniaturisation. The moment kroncong caught the attention of the colonial press, the music was an as yet unnamed, unwritten foreign folk tradition alive in a rural niche of some notoriety in the vicinity of Batavia (Manusama 1919). Already familiar with, in particular, lower class Indo-Europeans in the capital city, the music consisted of a handful of melodies with more or less fixed lyrics in an archaic language, accompanied by guitar-like instru- ments. Before long, and once labelled as kroncong, the budding urban 1 This chapter is an original extract of a book by the same author, Roep der Verten.
    [Show full text]
  • Austria [email protected] [email protected] EDUCATION BA, Eastman School of Music/Unive
    SARAH WEISS Roseggerkai 5/16 8010 Graz - Austria [email protected] [email protected] EDUCATION BA, Eastman School of Music/University of Rochester – with distinction (1984) MA, PhD, New York University – with distinction (1987, 1998) (Dean’s Award for Best Dissertation in the Humanities) ACADEMIC POSITIONS 2018-present Privatdozentin and Senior Research Scientist, Institut für Ethnomusikologie, KunstUniversitätGraz Stellvertreterin, Institut für Ethnomusikologie Stellvertreterin, Doktoratsschule für das Wissenschaftliche Doktoratsstudium 2014-2018 Associate Professor (Humanities and Anthropology) and Rector of Saga Residential College, Yale-NUS College, Singapore 2013-2014 Visiting Associate Professor in Humanities, Yale-NUS College, Singapore 2009-2014 Associate Professor, Department of Music, Yale University, Director, Gamelan Suprabanggo, Director of Graduate Studies (2011-2013) 2005-2009 Assistant Professor, Department of Music, Yale University; Director, Gamelan Suprabanggo http://www.yale.edu/seas/yalegamelan.htm 2004-2005 Visiting Professor, Department of Music, Harvard University 1999-2004 Assistant Professor, Department of Music, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill; Director, Gamelan Nyai Saraswati http://www.ibiblio.org/gamelan/ 1997-1999 Full-time, tenured Lecturer in Ethnomusicology, Department of Music, University of Sydney 1994- 1996 Half-time Lecturer in Ethnomusicology, Department of Music, University of Sydney 1993 Visiting Lecturer, Department of Music, University of Sydney 1992-1998 Founding director and primary teacher of the Sydney University Department of Music, Central Javanese ensemble, Gamelan Kyai Kebo Giro Weiss February 2021 PUBLICATIONS – BOOKS AND MANUALS (under consideration) Bloomsbury Handbook of Ethnomusicology edited by Sarah Weiss and Sarah Morelli (60 articles and contributors, 300,000 words). (under contract) Is There Such a Thing as Singaporean Performance? edited by Sarah Weiss and Siavash Moazzami Vahid.
    [Show full text]
  • INDO 68 0 1106956491 1 37.Pdf (1.649Mb)
    Editors' Note As this issue of Indonesia goes to press, the People's Consultative Assembly has taken the decisive step of effectively ratifying the results of the August 30 referendum by which the people of East Timor overwhelmingly declared their choice for national independence. The editors believe this occasion is of sufficient importance to congratulate the Consultative Assembly on the wisdom of its decision, and at the same time to congratulate the people of East Timor on the successful culmination of a long and painful struggle for freedom and self-determination. Hidup Timor Loro Sae! The Traditional Javanese Performing Arts in the Twilight of the New O rder: Two Letters From Solo Marc Perlman By coincidence I spent the summers of 1997 and 1998 in Solo, Central Java, Indonesia. Along with Yogyakarta, its rival sixty kilometers or so to the west, Solo is the center of high Javanese culture, and heir to the traditions of a colonial-era royal court. I had lived therefor three years in the mid-1980s, where I studied karawitan (traditional gamelan music). Aside from a two-month visit in 1994, however, I had not seen the place for seven years. I returned to Indonesia in 1997 to participate in an international gamelan festival; in 1998 I came to purchase a set cf gamelan instruments for my university. Needless to say, I did not know that Soeharto's thirty-two-year rule would end in May 1998, much less did I plan to take before-and-after snapshots of the Solonese artistic scene. Nevertheless, the reader may find these two personal accounts cf some interest.
    [Show full text]
  • Vocal Technique of the Keroncong Song Ahlan Wa Sahlan Hary Murcahyanto1*, Yuspianal Imtihan1, Yuli Khaironi2
    Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 464 Proceedings of the 1st Progress in Social Science, Humanities and Education Research Symposium (PSSHERS 2019) Vocal Technique of the Keroncong Song Ahlan Wa Sahlan Hary Murcahyanto1*, Yuspianal Imtihan1, Yuli Khaironi2 1 Dep. Study Programe Drama Art, Dance and Music, Faculty of Language Arts and Humaniora, Universitas Hamzanwadi, Lombok, Indonesia, 2Dep. Senior High School 2 Selong, Lombok, Indonesia. *Corresponding author. Email: harymurcahyanto@gmailcom ABSTRACT Keroncong vocal technique on the song Ahlan Wa Sahlan created by TGKH. Muhammad Zainuddin Abdul Majid has an important role to play. This paper is the result of research focusing on the keroncong vocal technique and the keroncong vocal carrying technique. This type of research uses descriptive qualitative methods. The subject in this study was the song Ahlan Wa Sahlan. Data collection techniques used in this study were interviews, observation and documentation. Checking the validity of the data in this study uses source triangulation. The data analysis technique used consists of four stages, namely, data collection, data reduction, data display, and Conclusion drawing / verification (checking conclusions and verification). The results of this study include the keroncong vocal technique on the Ahlan Wa Sahlan song in detail and detail. First, when singing with the keroncong vocal technique, you must be able to master curves, waves, gregel, willed and triyul. The technique may not be owned by all a keroncong singer, because it is related to flight hours as a keroncong singer. Second, the nature of the process, the most important thing to have is a good appreciation, so that the message contained in the song can be conveyed to the audience.
    [Show full text]
  • Music As Episteme, Text, Sign & Tool: Comparative Approaches To
    I would like to dedicate this work firstly to Sue Achimovich, my mother, without whose constant support I wouldn’t have been able to have jumped across the abyss and onto the path; I would also like to dedicate the work to Dr Saskia Kersenboom who gave me the light and showed me the way; Finally I would like to dedicate the work to both Patrick Eecloo and Guy De Mey who supported me when I could have fallen over the edge … This edition is also dedicated to Jaak Van Schoor who supported me throughout the creative process of this work. Foreword This work has been produced thanks to more than four years of work. The first years involved a great deal of self- questioning; moving from being an active creative artist—a composer and performer of experimental music- theatre—to being a theoretician has been a long journey. Suffice to say, on the gradual process which led to the ‘composition’ of this work, I went through many stages of looking back at my own creative work to discover that I had already begun to answer many of the questions posed by my new research into Balinese culture, communicating remarkable information about myself and the way I’ve attempted to confront my world in a physically embodied fashion. My early academic experiments, attending conferences and writing papers, involved at first largely my own compositional work. What I realise now is that I was on a journey towards developing a system of analysis which would be based on both artistic and scientific information, where ‘subjective’ experience would form an equally valid ‘product’ for analysis: it is, after all, only through our own personal experience that we can interface with the world.
    [Show full text]
  • Philip Yampolsky
    C an the Traditional A rts Survive, and Should They?1 Philip Yampolsky 1. Definition What are we talking about when we use this term "traditional" in Indonesia? Let me offer just a quick and simple definition here, so you know at least what I have in mind. I will phrase it (and most of this talk) in terms of music, because that is the art I know best, but I believe the essence of what I say could be applied to other traditional arts as well. I imagine a continuum, at one end (the "wholly traditional" end) of which is music that shows no obvious foreign (extra-Indonesian) influence in its musical idiom; at the other end is music that is wholly foreign in idiom. For my purposes today, any music that registers at or near the traditional end may be considered traditional. At the other end of the scale would be music in the European harmonized idioms (pop Indonesia, patriotic songs, church songs) or music in the mixed Middle Eastern/Indian/Westem idioms of dangdut, orkes gambus, and qasidah moderen.1 2 In between would be the musics in "hybrid" idioms—kroncong, for example, or tanjidor. A more complicated, but perhaps more useful, picture could present two continua. One would be the one just described; the second would have the same poles, but the domain would be not the music's idiom but its aesthetic. (Musics would be positioned on this continuum according to the extent, for example, to which they have been packaged in accordance with European/American norms of duration, virtuoso performance, attractive young performers, sharp beginnings and endings, predominance of singers over instrumentalists, etc.) But I will not bring this aesthetic domain into the discussion here.
    [Show full text]
  • Kroncong Orchestration of Millennial Generation
    Harmonia: Journal of Arts Research and Education 19 (2) (2019), 117-125 p-ISSN 2541-1683|e-ISSN 2541-2426 Available online at http://journal.unnes.ac.id/nju/index.php/harmonia DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15294/harmonia.v19i2.16893 Kroncong Orchestration of Millennial Generation Victor Ganap Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta, Indonesia Submitted: November 22, 2018. Revised: November 4, 2019. Accepted: December 28, 2019 Abstract Kroncong is the urban popular music of Indonesia, which some scholars suggest was brought by Portuguese in the early sixteenth century. Kroncong becomes popular across the archipelago as accompaniment in its musical genre, theatre and film. Although popular music has long been an integral part of Indonesian cultural domain, genres such as kroncong have been overlooked by music scholars. This article aims to introduce kroncong orchestration that could be performed in an updated style for incorporating repertoire from any other genres into idiomatic kroncong, that will be adopted by the millennial generation. Therefore, the reinvention of kroncong will not only be a significant contribution to scholarship on Indonesian popular music, but it will also contrib- ute to a wider understanding of the complexities of indigenous ethnicity, political power, social class, and gender. The orchestration that will retain its rhythm pattern and vocal ornamentation, while reinforcing the strings and winds as melodic carriers. Keywords: Kroncong; Orchestration; Millennial Generation How to Cite: Ganap, V. (2019). Kroncong Orchestration of Millennial Generation. Harmonia: Journal of Arts Research And Education, 19(2), 117-125. INTRODUCTION has survived to this day as an example of a cultural expression that creatively com- Kroncong is the music of the urban bines various musical elements from the cultural community that grew and deve- West and the East.
    [Show full text]
  • Cultural Interaction of Portuguese Moresco and Cafrinho; (3) a Christian Minority Group Who Historically Owned the Church Established by Justinus Vinck in 1748
    Krontjong Toegoe in Tugu Village: Generic Form of Indonesian Keroncong Music1 by Victor Ganap Abstract Keroncong music today has been considered as one of the Indonesian musical mainstreams, but the historical background of how the music emerged remains a mystery. The only keroncong known from the past is Krontjong Toegoe, developed in Tugu village since the seventeenth century as a hybrid genre of Portuguese sojourn. This article aims to discuss the musical style of Krontjong Toegoe and the origin of its supporting community in Tugu village north of Jakarta. While Krontjong Toegoe is still alive up to now, its historical relationships to the sixteenth century Portuguese music and to the Indonesian keroncong music today are of important and interesting discourse. Introduction So far there were very few articles on keroncong music that have been written by musicologists, and this article opens the discussion by quoting their opinions, which are of important points in reviewing the position and legitimacy of keroncong music. In the following discourse, Australian musicologist Bronia Kornhauser was among few scholars who have visited and conducted field research in Tugu village (kampung) in 1973. Her essay entitled In Defence of Kroncong has been an important source and widely quoted in today keroncong publications. After her visit to the village, she admitted that Krontjong Toegoe played by the Tugu musicians which lasted for more than three centuries have been an important evidence to the investigation on Portuguese musical legacy in Indonesia. Tugu holds a unique place in the history of kroncong. It is living proof of the Portugis- Indonesian heritage of this music.
    [Show full text]
  • The Prospect and Future of Youth Kroncong Group at Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia in Bandung
    Harmonia: Journal of Arts Research and Education 18 (1) (2018), 52-61 p-ISSN 2541-1683|e-ISSN 2541-2426 Available online at http://journal.unnes.ac.id/nju/index.php/harmonia DOI: 10.15294/harmonia.v18i1.15524 The Prospect and Future of Youth Kroncong Group at Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia in Bandung Hery Supiarza1, Cece Sobarna1, Yudi Sukmayadi2, Raden Muhammad Mulyadi1 1Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia 2Department of Music Education, Faculty of Arts and Design Education, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Indonesia Received: December 13, 2017. Revised: April 23, 2018. Accepted: June 10, 2018 Abstract This article discusses the prospect and future of youth Kroncong group at the Indonesia Univer- sity of Education or Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia in Bandung. The focus of research subject in this study is one particular Kroncong group namely Orkes Kroncong De Oemar Bakrie. By examining the society’s appreciation towards the group performances and by implementing the triangulation techniques; results show that the group can be seen as a representative of youth Kroncong group in Bandung. Based on research from 2000 until 2017, it can be concluded that University-based Kroncong group is more excelled not only in the music industry, but also in the music development and the music organization. The group is considered as a role model and parameter for other youth Kroncong group in Bandung. Keywords: Bandung’s youth; Kroncong; Prospect; Future How to Cite: Supiarza, H., Sobarna, C., Sukmayadi, Y., & Mulyadi, R. M. (2018). The Prospect and Future of Youth Kroncong Group at Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia in Bandung. Harmonia: Journal of Arts Research And Education, 18(1), 52-61.
    [Show full text]
  • A Brief Study on the Musical Performance of Tingkilan from East Kalimantan
    Fl. Sudiran, A BriefHUMANIORA Study on the Musical Performance of Tingkilan from East Kalimantan VOLUME 18 No. 1 Februari 2006 Halaman 27 - 36 A BRIEF STUDY ON THE MUSICAL PERFORMANCE OF TINGKILAN FROM EAST KALIMANTAN Fl. Sudiran* ABSTRAK Komunikasi dan kontak perorangan antara pedagang dari Timur Tengah/Padang Pasir dan Indonesia pada waktu yang lampau selama beberapa dekade membuat mereka berkolaborasi, misalnya, di bidang sosial, ekonomi, budaya, pertahanan, keamanan, dan lain-lain. Peralatan musik ini adalah gambus, maruas ( percussion ). Semua lagu, musik, dan tari mempunyai gaya keislaman. Yang paling terkenal di Kalimantan Timur adalah Tingkilan yang mengiringi tari Jepen.Tingkilan dipentaskan pada waktu pesta. Pengaruh agama Islam sangat kuat dalam musik ini. Kata Kunci: gaya, keislaman, tingkilan, kolaborasi. INTRODUCTION called Tingkilan group orchestra. It still exist in There are many kinds of music in East East Kalimantan and the people perform it on Kalimantan, for examples Gamelan music certain feast days, for example wedding party, orchestra in the museum of Mulawarman harvest days, Maulud Nabi Muhammd SAW Tenggarong, Sampe in the society of Dayak Celebration, Isra’ Mi’raj of Muhammad SAW, Kenyah at Pampang village nothern part of Idul Fitri, Idul Adha, Nuzul Qur’an and the New Samarinda, and Tingkilan in the society of Kutai Year of Islam. Most people in East Kalimantan or among the people on the beach of East still enjoy watching and listening tingkilan. Kalimantan. Tingkilan group orchestra consists of one The those kinds of music mentioned above Gambus, five medusa, one cello and some are not so popular nowadays because they are singers (male or female).
    [Show full text]
  • Downloaded from Brill.Com09/29/2021 02:25:09PM Via Free Access 2 Bart Barendregt and Els Bogaerts Appropriated and Inverted by the Colonized Themselves
    CHAPTER ONE RECOLLECTING RESONANCES: LISTENING TO AN INDONESIAN–DUTCH MUSICAL HERITAGE Bart Barendregt and Els Bogaerts A Mutual Heritage? Recent years have seen an increased involvement of music scholars not only with postcolonial theory, but more generally with the topics of mem- ory, heritage and the workings of nostalgia.1 Coinciding with such interests is a re-evaluation of historical materials of all sorts. Accounts of travellers, explorers, government officers or colonial linguists have been mined to understand the meaning of music in those colonial days; to show how the Other and his music have been presented and represented, and how such practices persist into the present. Researchers are increasingly aware of how music, and the performing arts more generally, may offer possibilities to study colonial life. Musical practices cast a light on the customs of both colonizer and the colonized, and the very fabric of everyday life in those days; matters that otherwise might be difficult to untie. Likewise, it offers a useful prism through which to study the often perverse mechanisms of control and suppression so typical of colonial society. Music’s meanings, in absence of ‘any denotative back-up’ need to be constantly established (Born and Hesmondhalgh 2000: 46) and thus may be instrumental in hiding the traces of representational violence; even more so than the literary or visual arts. Consequently, it seems a perfect tool for naturalizing such power imbalances. In respect of music’s workings within the colonial project, important insights have lately been derived from postcolonial theory, highlighting techniques and forms through which power is deployed in and through Western music, but also how such techniques and forms may, on the other hand, be 1 Especially the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the heydays of the imperial era, have proven to be a fertile ground for such postcolonial flavoured music studies.
    [Show full text]
  • Recollecting Resonances Verhandelingen Van Het Koninklijk Instituut Voor Taal-, Land En Volkenkunde
    Recollecting Resonances Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land en Volkenkunde Edited by Rosemarijn Hoefte KITLV, Leiden Henk Schulte Nordholt KITLV, Leiden Editorial Board Michael Laffan Princeton University Adrian Vickers Sydney University Anna Tsing University of California Santa Cruz VOLUME 288 Southeast Asia Mediated Edited by Bart Barendregt (KITLV) Ariel Heryanto (Australian National University) VOLUME 4 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/vki Recollecting Resonances Indonesian–Dutch Musical Encounters Edited by Bart Barendregt and Els Bogaerts LEIDEN • BOSTON 2014 This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (CC‐BY‐NC 3.0) License, which permits any non‐commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. The realization of this publication was made possible by the support of KITLV (Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies) Cover illustration: The photo on the cover is taken around 1915 and depicts a Eurasian man seated in a Batavian living room while plucking the strings of his instrument (courtesy of KITLV Collec- tions, image 13352). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Recollecting resonances : Indonesian-Dutch musical encounters / edited by Bart Barendregt and Els Bogaerts. pages cm. — (Verhandelingen van het koninklijk instituut voor taal-, land en volkenkunde ; 288) (Southeast Asia mediated ; 4) Includes index. ISBN 978-90-04-25609-5 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-25859-4 (e-book) 1. Music— Indonesia—Dutch influences. 2. Music—Indonesia—History and criticism. 3. Music— Netherlands—Indonesian influences.
    [Show full text]